Comments on: The Damore-Google dust-uphttp://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2017/08/12/the-damore-google-dust-up/
ecoculture, geophilosophy, mediapoliticsThu, 14 Dec 2017 02:27:45 +0000hourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.3By: TLMhttp://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2017/08/12/the-damore-google-dust-up/#comment-3270737
Sat, 02 Sep 2017 16:31:50 +0000http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/?p=9395#comment-3270737Thank you for wading into this territory…. the thing that surprised and annoyed me by the way the press handle this in the aftermath was how little attention was paid to the differences of men, the discourse was entirely framed in terms of women.
In bioethics there is a whole field of genetic determinism, what can be said about the biological difference between men and women in a social context is limited. Damore is talking about women in general, but is targeting women at Google, not an average woman. Biologically we can say scientifically that males overwhelmingly are more predisposed to OCD, and the autism spectrum than females. This is fact. However, this FACT was not in the discourse over the Damore affair.

There is also evidence to show that people on this spectrum tend to go into technological fields (whether male or female.) These fields tend to be rigid in their structure. This rigidity means that those people using them must abide by the rigid rules in order for the system to work.

As Ursula Franklin wrote in her Massey Lecture series, The Real World of Technology, the design of technological systems is often determined by the limits of the system…… Think the keys of a type writer. The configuration of typewriter keys was determined by the frequency that certain letters were used in the english language in order to stop the keys from jamming.
Fast forward to the digital age and we still use the same computer keyboard lay out, even though according to Franklin there are more ergonomic configurations….. Old habits die hard.
Rigid systems like tech may once have needed unintuitive geeks crunching code, but given the ubiquitous nature of the digital age, we have to conform to the systems rigidity.
There is some evidence emerging that this sort of rigid conformity actually reduces intelligence. This research is based upon the playing of certain computer games called single-shooter games.
All this to say that this is why Google was right to fire Damore, it is clear that his email shows a rigidity of thought that makes for a hostile work environment. He may of had a partial phd in Biology from Harvard, but he obviously didn’t pay much attention to the uncertainty taught in biology. As one professor told me, ” in a biology undergrad you learn the rules of biology, in grad school you learn all the exceptions to those rules.” Damore didn’t stick around for the PhD degree.
In Biology, if one is going to claim scientific evidence of gender difference it must be located in the Y chromosome, anything beyond that is uncertain probabilities and culture. Also Biology, because of genetics, is increasingly math orientated, which is why Craig Ventor former CEO of Celara Genomics is a mathematician not a biologist. And yes real experts, even nobel prize winning scientists like James Watson, say really stupid unscientific racist things sometimes.
Yes, we should talk in terms of what we know evidentially and why even experts can be wrong when they step outside their expertise. The misuse of authority is dangerous. Damore’s manifesto was an arrogant unscientific expose’ of why Google needs more humanities orientated workers to fight the rigid dogma embedded in technology development that is then imposed upon the rest of society. Yes, evolution is at work and technology will change us.

]]>By: Adrian Ivakhivhttp://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2017/08/12/the-damore-google-dust-up/#comment-3269294
Thu, 24 Aug 2017 12:07:20 +0000http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/?p=9395#comment-3269294The Sept 2017 issue of Scientific American, a special issue on sex and gender, packs in a lot of interesting articles on the complicated science of these things…
]]>By: dmfhttp://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2017/08/12/the-damore-google-dust-up/#comment-3267624
Fri, 18 Aug 2017 19:39:56 +0000http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/?p=9395#comment-3267624these folks did something close to what i suggested above, not sure if it can be sustained or replicated but worth a try in places that get desperate enough:http://www.richmondprogressivealliance.net/
]]>By: dmfhttp://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2017/08/12/the-damore-google-dust-up/#comment-3267288
Thu, 17 Aug 2017 17:04:01 +0000http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/?p=9395#comment-3267288seems to me that most of the key issues of our times are deeply divisive in ways that both sides would not be wrong in understanding compromise as defeat (if not catastrophe) , so I think it’s more a matter of trying to align with people who are like-minded enough, starting small and very specific/local, building trust and competence and moving on from there, the nearly (if not outright) impossible part is building in reflexivity and avoiding the tyranny of the means (not to mention the just plain mean) so that fixes for specific local problems/needs don’t become unquestioned/unconscious modes/norms. With any success at that one can than try and win public offices and organize private ventures.
Richard Rorty was right enough to try and keep the public realm as democratic and kind as possible thru institutions like courts and public services while allowing as much diversity as possible in private lives with the hope that by enabling minority rights one can gain truly new perspectives to gain traction. All is easier said than done in our age of ever increasing monopolization and the corporate capture of regulators.
Be interested in seeing how your mode might work even in something you have relative control over like organizing a class of undergrads.
you might like:

Wish I could turn it into an easy formula, but I don’t think that’s possible… But here’s a stab at it:

(1) (a) Tease out what the key needs/values are being expressed through the positions on both/all sides. (b) Articulate them clearly in ways that are understandable to all. (c) Seek some concordance or compromise that both/all sides might be able to live with. (This is the “Harmony” criterion.)

(2) (a) Articulate what the issues of long-range importance are and why (i.e., by putting them into contexts of widening temporality, spatiality, possibility, etc.). (b) Distinguish between options based on which ones bring more expansiveness, more novelty and possibility, and which ones bring less. (This could mean “which ones feel better,” but it requires bringing those feelings to cognitive awareness and assessment.) (c) Other things being equal, opt for the first kind over the second. (This is the “Intensity” criterion.)

(3) Seek a viable and satisfying balance between the two.

How does that sound? No easy answers, but I’d be interested in hearing your own formula for deciding in such circumstances.

Of course, having institutions that balance these kinds of things out for us (e.g., democratically answerable courts, etc.) helps.

]]>By: dmfhttp://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2017/08/12/the-damore-google-dust-up/#comment-3265883
Mon, 14 Aug 2017 14:52:46 +0000http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/?p=9395#comment-3265883http://www.cornell.edu/video/the-demand-for-ugliness-picassos-bodies
]]>By: dmfhttp://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2017/08/12/the-damore-google-dust-up/#comment-3265881
Mon, 14 Aug 2017 14:49:17 +0000http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/?p=9395#comment-3265881thanks but not sure what that means in actual everyday situations (and so many of the vital issues of our day, climate-change, capitalism, minority and women’s rights, freedom of movement, etc) like this where there are passionately/deeply held opposing views (even about what counts as evidence/mattering). My sense is that Rorty was right that at best we can have institutions like courts that are responsive to (in some democratic/representative way shaped by) public views/input and yet protect minority rights, try and decrease cruelty/suffering and allow for variety in private lives.
]]>By: Adrian J Ivakhivhttp://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2017/08/12/the-damore-google-dust-up/#comment-3265813
Mon, 14 Aug 2017 02:32:23 +0000http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/?p=9395#comment-3265813Here’s a useful article on the science of gender differences: https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what-does-the-research-say-about-gender-differences/
]]>By: Adrian J Ivakhivhttp://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2017/08/12/the-damore-google-dust-up/#comment-3265710
Sun, 13 Aug 2017 13:46:31 +0000http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/?p=9395#comment-3265710Whitehead distinguishes between what he calls “major” beauty, which produces intensity through novel contrasts, and “minor” beauty” which merely exhibits harmony among diverse factors. (For him, beauty is, among other things, “the mutual adaptation of the several factors in an occasion of experience,” but also something like the driving force of the universe–it’s what every actual occasion aims to achieve in its synthesis of elements it brings together. And the universe is made up of such actual occasions.) Assuming there’s something to this ontology, the answer to your question “have you tried this in practice?” would be “Yes, and so have you (and everything else in the universe)!”

I guess if we wanted to avoid Whitehead altogether, you could say that the intensity-harmony duality is one of those dyads that is worth trying to reconcile… Harmony is usually counterposed to disharmony or dissonance; intensity to something like calmness, moderation, lethargy, etc. Since the two (intensity and harmony) aren’t opposites, they’re not really contradictory, so there’s fruitfulness in trying to bring them together…

]]>By: dmfhttp://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2017/08/12/the-damore-google-dust-up/#comment-3265541
Sat, 12 Aug 2017 13:55:18 +0000http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/?p=9395#comment-3265541see what you make of:https://soundcloud.com/edgefoundationinc/dan-sperber
]]>By: dmfhttp://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2017/08/12/the-damore-google-dust-up/#comment-3265540
Sat, 12 Aug 2017 13:54:11 +0000http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/?p=9395#comment-3265540not sure how you can be for intensities (plural) and for harmony/synthesis, have you tried this in practice?
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